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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWas Sydney's smallpox outbreak of 1789 an act of biological warfare against Aboriginal tribes?
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/was-sydneys-smallpox-outbreak-an-act-of-biological-warfare/5395050<snip>
An outbreak of smallpox in Sydney in 1789 killed thousands of Aborigines and weakened resistance to white settlement. Chris Warren argues that the pandemic was no accident, but rather a deliberate act of biological warfare against Australias first inhabitants.
In April 1789, a sudden, unusual, epidemic of smallpox was reported amongst the Port Jackson Aboriginal tribes who were actively resisting settlers from the First Fleet. This outbreak may have killed over 90 per cent of nearby native families and maybe three quarters or half of those between the Hawkesbury River and Port Hacking. It also killed an unknown number at Jervis Bay and west of the Blue Mountains.
Yet the journal of marine captain Watkin Tench indicates that the First Fleet carried bottles of smallpox.
Some authors have argued that the First Fleet had no involvement whatsoever in the outbreak, while others argue that if the Fleet was involved, then it must have been some other disease such as chickenpox.
In the 18th century, the use of smallpox by British forces was not unprecedented. This tactic was promoted by Major Robert Donkin and used by General Jeffrey Amherst in 1763, when smallpox-laden blankets and a handkerchief were distributed to Native Americans from Fort Pitt near the Great Lakes.
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British colonialists were barbarians. Will there ever be karma?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Gman
(24,780 posts)draw and quarter a person?
And these realities still shock me - don't ask me why.
And they were righteously proud of it too. It's seems when the most unthinkable, inhumane acts are committed, they are done by white people. Name a Black mass murderer where all kinds of freaky shit was done. With the notable exception of the legends about Idi Amin, you can't do it because there are none. There are a handful of Latino mass murderers but they'll just kill you and that's it. They don't like have sex with your corpse, male or female.
mulsh
(2,959 posts)here's an article with links to Amherst's correspondence. A fine example of the British fight for colonialism at its finest.
https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html
dembotoz
(16,784 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)elias49
(4,259 posts)Germ warfare in its infancy.
Mariana
(14,854 posts)The people who did this have been dead for a long time. What do you think karma would look like, if it took place today?
And?
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)about the smallpox epidemic in this country during the Revolution called Pox American by Elizabeth Anne Fenn.
By the time of our Revolution smallpox was no longer endemic here (I'm not even sure it ever had been), and as a consequence the European Americans had a greatly reduced resistance to the disease. So spreading the disease was very effective.
In a related note, by the third quarter or so of the 19th century a much milder strain of smallpox evolved, known as variola minor. It had a vastly lower death rate (if I'm recalling correctly something like 1-2%), did not cause scarring, and because its victims weren't as sick, they remained ambulatory and therefore spread the disease more readily. Because of this last, the variola minor form was rapidly replacing regular smallpox, variola major, meaning smallpox at that time was moving rapidly towards becoming a relative harmless childhood disease like measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. But then effective smallpox vaccinations were developed and over time the disease was eradicated in the wild. Someone wrote an entire book about the last major smallpox epidemic in this country and how universal vaccination against the disease came about.
As a matter of trivia, the last smallpox outbreak in the U.S. was in 1948, and I've also read when it occurred, it became clear that having had a vaccination even fifty years earlier still provided immunity.
mathematic
(1,431 posts)The lives saved have more than equaled the lives taken. So it looks like karma dictates the British have some leeway to kill more people.
Of course, I don't believe in karma.